FIRST BREAKFAST, THEN WTH...

14 FEBRUARY, SUNDAY, TOO EARLY

The Packhouse kitchen really outdid themselves this morning. Breakfast with the Alpha was topped with a pink Vday thing. All the muffins turned into cupcakes with just a spiral of cream cheese and the pancakes were tinged with pieces of red...dried cranberries probably. But the crown jewel of the Vday special breakfast with the Alpha had to be the open faced sandwiches - made of a variety of toppings: tuna, ham, cheese, eggs in all its forms and combinations. And no matter what the flavor or sandwich, they each had a single cherry tomato cut open to form a red heart shape.

Savy took out a phone for photos. Then she picked up two plates, "Can you let Mum and Dad know I might not be coming in for breakfast later? I'll be keeping Lizzy company at the Youth Club."

"Okay, sure." I mumbled.

"Sam?" Savy's brows creased a little, "Are you alright?"

"Uhm... uh huh." No, actually, I was suddenly not feeling all that great anymore.

"What's wrong?" Ben came over all the way from the other end of the buffet table. I think it was Savy's concerned expression that alerted him unecessarily.

I blinked and then I yawned, "I just don't have any appetite suddenly."

Savy and Ben were immediately alarmed.

"Should I call Mum?" Savy asked.

"Do you need a doctor?" Ben asked.

"What's wrong?" Jonah loped over, his plate a small mountain of food.The combination of it... predominately scrambled eggs, and whole meal bread, was that potato salad with mayonnaise? I covered my mouth, because I thought I would gag. But no, my guts were made of sterner stuff, and I only yawned.

"Sleepy." I decided, "I'm going home."

"It's alright." Ben told Savy, "I'll walk her home."

I guess the caffeine or whatever was in the Tiramisu had run its course and was out of my system. I didn't even need Ben to push me along. I made my way back home, Ben unlocked the sliding door by the pool room and let us into the house.

"You can go back to the food, Ben." I told him. "You don't have to walk me all the way up."

"Okay." Ben said, "I've informed Ki. He says your Mum would be up to check on you in a minute. Yeah, so go on up."

I couldn't help but notice Ben looked tired too.

"Are you going to be okay?" I asked.

"Yeah, it's just breakfast." Ben said.

"Dean's housewarming." I reminded him.

"I'll take a nap after that." Ben said.

"Alpha duties - are you on?"

Yes, he was. Ben groaned in the palm of his hand.

"Haha, look! Our roles are reversed! Now I'm the one reminding you of your overpacked schedule." I felt quite proud of myself.

"I have committee work for the stupid vday dance too." Ben remembered miserably, "It's going to be a long night."

I patted him on his back, "There, there, beta. You can sleep at the dance."

"You better get rest now, Sam. I'll see if I can cancel the Alpha Duties." Ben decided.

"Sam! Are you alright?" Mum came in from the connecting glass room. She glided over to touch my forehead, "There is no fever."

I've never had a fever before in my life!

"Good morning, Luna." Ben greeted in his usual monotone, but in this situation, it made him look cool and mature (even though he was half asleep on his feet.)

"Good morning, Ben. Thank you for walking Sam back." Mum said.

"Is there anything else I can do for you, Luna?" Ben asked politely in perfect beta fashion.

"No, thank you very much Ben." Mum answered.

"You're welcome Luna." Ben bowed, and left.

Mum turned her attention back to me, "Now, what's wrong Sam? Are you feeling unwell? Does something hurt?"

"I'm sleepy." I explained, "I don't feel like eating."

Mum put a hand on my shoulder and steered me up the stairs, "Did you stay up all night with the girls?"

I nodded, "Uh huh."

Was I going to get into trouble for that? But Savy did it lots of times before... and Mum never liked it.

Mum would ask the next morning, "Savy, did you stay up all night again?"

Savy's excuse would run along the lines of, "But Mum... it's not a school night/the other girls.../I couldn't miss...."

And then Mum would start to lecture, "Savannah Kingsley! How many times do we have to discuss this? Blah blah blah..."

Okay, you got me, Mum never went "blah, blah, blah..." It just sounded like that to me. Mum liked to lecture, I mean "reason" with Savy a lot. She could have very long "discussions" on why Savy shouldn't or should do something. These discussions were usually one sided, but Mum would say, "You know what, I'm glad we could have this talk." when she was done and feel better.

With me, Mum was quite different.

With me it was usually a "Sam! NO!/STOP!/DON'T!" (Present Tense).

Or "Oh, Sam!" (Perfect Continuous).

Or "Whatever should I do with you, Sam?" (Past Tense).

My mum was very grammatically correct, even when she was upset with me.

But today, Mum was going, "Blah blah blah... Sam? Are you listening?"

We reached my room and I stretched the moment I saw the bed, "Yes. You were saying blah blah blah, Mum."

"I was not!" Mum put her hands on her hips, and then she sighed, "Oh, Sam!"

I waited for the outcome to be deliberated.

"Whatever should I do with you?"

Past tense. Which means it was okay now. I climbed onto my bed and curled up in the middle of it, "You can tell me again later. With real words, not blah blah blah."

Mum patted my head, "Alright, I get it, you're too tired. Next time, pace yourself, don't overwork. You're still young. You have your whole life ahead of you, so there's no rush to get everything done straight away."

What? But I wasn't working Mum. I was playing. I was always playing...but I was too sleepy to open my eyes and tell her.

Mum stopped patting my head for a moment, then she pressed a kiss on top of my head where she was patting, "One moment, you're all grown up and changing the world, and then suddenly, you're back to being my puppy again..."

I don't really know what she said after that. And if I dreamed, I don't remember it either. When I opened my eyes, there was no clam shell bed, or lemony sheets, or bed, or room, or house... of any sort. I turned my head on the cold wet dirt where the ice had melted on my cheeks. WTH. I was in a shallow dirt pit, about the size of what I imagine the shape and size of a spacious coffin would be like. My hair flared and got itself immediately tangled in the bramble above me. WTH again.

Grrr... now I was freezing on the cold dirt floor, out in the open, under a hedge of bare bramble, in the middle of nowhere. My hair caught in the branches, and my cheek scratched by the grit on the ground. To make things worse, my nose stopped working. I would imagine lying in a damp ditch would smell like a lot of wet dirt and a trillion other things dirt held, but NOTHING.

S***. I dreamed traveled again.

And of all the places to dream travel to! I could hear a distant rumble. Thundercloud? Giant lawn mower? I knew this sound - motorbikes! A lot of them, not here, but near. Okay, don't panic! So what if I were trapped in a ditch, my hair caught in bramble, with the sound of at least a dozen motorbikes around me... at least they were not heading towards it.

And then the sound of wolves dying, the howling and whining... OMG, get me out of here!

No, no, I mustn't lose my head (in both literal and figurative ways). Stay calm. I'm the Alpha. I've got this. I took a deep breath. The first thing I needed to to was to get my hair out of the bramble. I rolled over to face up. Luckily, my hair was quite long, so I could still roll over. Oh boy, stupid hair. How did you get yourself tangled up in this mess. I tugged a bit, but the thicket held fast to my hair, so I had no choice but to tease my hair out bit by bit. After a while, I realized I was wasting time, who would care or even notice if I broke the branches? I snapped off the most tangled of branches but while they weren't thick branches, there were thorns - a lot of thorns.

If I had a knife or a pair of scissors, I would cut off my hair entirely. But I didn't, so there was no point in wishing for it. Just stay focus, Sam! You can do it! Don't let the sound of motorbikes distract you!

Because it was very distracting, the motorbikes sounded like they were travelling in all directions. And they didn't travel in a straight line either. They went round in sweeping curves around the urm... woodlands? At least it looked like I was in some kind of wide open type of woods. I could see the bare trees from a gap in the thicket. I couldn't see the sun, but I'm guessing it was still morning.

Anyway, there were motorbikes roaring first from the North, then the East... and they were circling closer! It took a while, but I soon realized (cos I was such a smart wolf), if you replaced the sounds of engines with that of wolves howling - I would be right in the middle of a hunt.

And not just any kind of hunt. A large one - I had never heard such a large hunting pack before. It's like all the fighting males were out hunting at one time.

First they position themselves, and then the first wave would give chase, then the second, and bit by bit, they would encircle their prey, culling off the weak ones that they caught, while driving the stronger ones to the center of their vortex.

The center of their vortex... which from what it sounded like, was where I was!

Don't panic! I've got this! I just need to get the last of my hair out. And then my hair had a brilliant idea, or perhaps it was just reacting to my panic. Suddenly it startled and threw itself out straight - even the strands caught in the bramble, but now these strands had a blue metallic sheen, and the brambles didn't stand a chance.

I was free, while the section of the thicket was properly wrecked. It looked like it was ran through a shredder. Okay... if I were on a survival or scouting exercise, this would have been an immediate fail.

I sat up in the ditch and took a careful look around. The motorbikes were still going, every now and then gunshots, or whining... grrrr.... gotta get out. But the thing about these pack hunts was that once you were in the sphere of the hunt, there was no way out. It was air tight.

My best bet was to hide higher ground, like in a tree. I scanned the surrounding trees. Oh great, it was winter. Right... Actually, if I had stayed in my ditch, that really would've been the safest place. I looked at my ditch, and the broken pieces of bramble littered around the area like a small explosion happened. I shouldn't hang around here.

I had the advantage of being scentless, so that's one less thing to worry about. But I needed to find some kind of hole that was out of sight. The hunt was closing in. Grrr... need to think quickly on my feet - or rather, it would sure be nice if Boo was here instead.

Right, Boo!

{Rogues are near} Unlike me, Boo was completely unfazed. In fact, I suspected she was sleeping while I struggled in the ditch. What's the use of having a super powerful alpha wolf if all she did was sleep all day?

I tried to make some sense of what was happening. I hated when I had to use my wolf sense - it took a lot more focus than my natural sense.

{Just relax and let me free.}

Yeah, right. While yes, if I didn't have to rein in Boo and try to use her wolf powers at the same time, I wouldn't need to exert nearly as much control technique, but who knew what Boo would've done if I gave her a free hand?

I kept my footsteps light so as not to disturb the dirt on the ground and carefully negotiated the woodlands ground. It's always harder in winter to keep your tracks hidden.

Mate was near... and my wolves. I'm not sure which, but they were getting nearer to me by the second. So were the rogues.

I found an enclave behind some large trees behind another bramble. I could dig another small ditch and hide my petite body in here. No matter I much I hated the idea of petite, I had to admit, it was a lifesaver more often than not.

Yeah, especially since I was always caught in situations where I had to be sneaking around lately. Grrr!

Anyway, back to finding a safe space. I'm running out of time. The motorbikes were getting closer.

{Rogues are near}

Right, that too.

The dirt was loose and easy to dig out... wait, something was not right. This was newly turned dirt! Someone else had dug here before! I was going to back off when I noticed something blue, I brushed off the dirt to reveal a bit of blue fabric, the color of our warrior jacket. Oh I wish I had my nose working! I was going in blind!

Anyway, I had no choice, I had to know. I dug out the blue material. I was right. It was our warrior jacket - luckily without a dead body. And then I found more things - sleeping bags, and what looked like camping supplies.

Okay... WTH, where was I? I looked around, Boo didn't recognize this as my territory, even though it looked like any part of one of the forested areas in the Green Packlands. But this was our warrior jacket. And in every indication, there had been a camp here - one that was carefully hidden away - the ditch I woke up in was probably where someone had slept with one of these sleeping bags.

I got an idea and checked the label inside the jacket. Two letters, "EJ".

EJ? As in the EJ I met at the Underground? That EJ was here? And then all the pieces fell together - I was in the dead middle of the Underground's rogue hunt at the Gold Packlands!

That's why the motorbikes sounded familiar! They were the ones we had been supplying the Underground with - the ones I was learning to ride on just yesterday. Although there were definitely more than four of them running about right now.

And if I remembered right, I always woke up in Bell's "bed" whenever I dream traveled to him. So the ditch I had destroyed the bramble cover of was probably where he last slept?

Which brought to mind a new and completely different kind of danger - Bell was going to be so mad if he found me here!